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THE STORY 



OF A 



CONCORD FARM 



AND ITS OWNERS. 



GRINDALL REYNOLDS, 

n 
FEBRUARY i, 1883. 



A Lecture delivered before the Concord Lyceum. 









By transfer 
D. of Aqr. 
27 '06 



THE STORY 



Concord Farm and its Owners. 



In a little sketch of Concord, which I wrote for 
Drake's History of Middlesex County, I alluded to a 
beautifully rounded little eminence filling the triangle 
made by the junction of the Sudbury and Assabet 
Rivers. One point of this triangle ends in a minia- 
ture promontory, known to children of our generation 
as Egg Rock. The hill itself was called by the plant- 
ers of the town plain North Hill. Since their day it 
has been variously termed Lee's Hill, Barrett's Hill 
and Hurd's Hill, while in recent times a not very suc- 
cessful effort has been made to restore the Indian 
name, Nawshawtuck. 

This little hill and the woodlands, meadows and 
arable land attached to it, make a tract of about four 
hundred acres, bounded chiefly by the two branches of 
the Concord River. It constitutes one of the few 
farms in Concord which very nearly retain their original 
character. Pieces of land have been added to it ; 
pieces of land have been subtracted from it ; but, in 
the bulk of it, the farm is what it was, when in the 
second division of the lands, two hundred and twenty- 
eight years ago, it fell to the lot of Maj. Simon Willard. 
I venture to ask attention to the story of this farm and 



4 The Story of a Concord Farm 

its owners. The subject must have some attractions 
for Concord men and women. The annals, them- 
selves, show in what a wonderful manner, in the lapse 
of time, width and variety of genuine human interest 
get attached to one little parcel of ground. 

We begin with the first owners, the Indians. A 
powerful tribe once occupied the whole region now 
known as Middlesex and Essex Counties, and could 
boast three thousand warriors. A mysterious plague 
in 1612 swept off nine-tenths of these people. "They 
died in heaps," says the old chronicler. "The bones 
and skulls in their several places of habitation made 
such a spectacle that it seemed a new-found Golgotha." 
Then their chief, Nanepashemit, whom the historian 
styles " the renowned," moved from Lynn to Medford, 
probably for greater safety from hereditary foes. There 
he built a curious fort of poles thirty feet long, driven 
into the ground in a great circle. But there his 
enemies found him and slew him ; and there he was 
buried. His wife, Squaw Sachem, succeeded to his 
authority, and first perhaps in Massachusetts practically 
asserted and maintained woman's rights. With a sa- 
gacity worthy of a Christian potentate she confirmed her 
power by a second marriage with Webbacowet, whom 
the old Puritan, with no surplus of politeness, termed 
" the pow-wow, witch, priest, sorcerer and chirurgeon 
of the tribe." What farther we know about this 
woman is told by the Massachusetts Colonial Records, 
where it appears that for a mere pittance she sold land 
to the settlers of Concord, Cambridge and Charles- 
town, and gave to one Jotham Gibbons the tract of land 
near the Mystic ponds, which she had reserved for her 
own use, to acknowledge (as she expressed it in her 



And its Owners. 5 

deed) " the many kindnesses she had received from his 
father, and for the tender love and respect which she 
bore to the son, and desired that these be recorded in 
perpetual remembrance of this thing." Across the 
centuries no more touching eulogium has come to us 
than this simple testimony of the rude forest queen to 
the Christian charity and justice of Captain Edward 
Gibbons, of Boston, and of plain Jotham Gibbons, his 
son. In 1 64 1 appears also a vote by which Cambridge 
is enjoined to give Squaw Sachem one coat every 
winter ; and the next year another vote by which she 
was to receive from the same source, as a sort of 
primitive back pay, four coats and thirty-five bushels 
of corn. In 1644 she and four other chiefs put them- 
selves, their subjects and property under the jurisdiction 
of the State. On this occasion sundry grave questions 
and simple answers are duly entered on the public 
records. For entire honesty of statement we commend 
to your attention the reply made to requirement No. 
3, which ran thus: "Not to do any unnecessary 
worke on the Sabath day." To which the straight- 
forward savages said, " It is easy to them. They have 
not much to do any day. And they can well take 
their ease that day." She died in 1662, old and blind. 
Of this broken tribe a feeble remnant under a sub- 
chief, Tahattawan, lived in Concord. Probably in all 
they did not number a hundred. For Higginson tells 
us, that " after the plague few Sagamores had three 
hundred subjects, some but fifteen, some only two." 
Their home was on the farther side of the stream from 
Egg Rock to Clamshell bluffs. Behind was land for 
their rude husbandry. Before the river, which, as Mr. 
Hale has said of some other poor folks, was all the 



6 The Story of a Concord Farm 

pork and beef barrel they had. On the hill possibly a 
little fort or stockade. No doubt they were glad to 
exchange land, which they could not occupy, for 
knives, hoes and cloth, of which they were in sore 
need. The rest of their story is quickly told. They 
became Christians ; pathetically asking " not to be 
moved far from the English, lest they should forget to 
pray." In their new home at Littleton they lived 
peaceably and honestly forty years. Then King 
Philip's war broke out. No chapter in our town his- 
tory so shameful as that which tells of the treatment 
of this helpless people. By order of the General 
Court they were removed back to Concord. Only one 
man, John Hoar, rose above the prejudice and fear of 
the hour. (I presume that his place was on Lexington 
street, where Mr. Alcott's house stands.) He per- 
mitted the poor exiles to put their wigwams on his 
grounds, took charge of them, employed them. There 
were but fifty-eight of them, only twelve were men, 
and these unarmed. "They were living," as Maj. 
Gookin reports, " very soberly, and quietly, and indus- 
triously." But neither their weakness nor their good 
conduct could save them from persecution. 

The exigencies of the time had brought to the sur- 
face one Capt. Moseley, a soldier of desperate courage, 
and an old West Indian buccanier. The superstitious 
red men viewed him with a peculiar terror ; for they 
said that he was a man with two heads. The fact was, 
he wore, what in New England in those days was not 
common, a wig. This wig, when he came into an 
engagement, he was wont to hang on a bush, and to 
keep, as the Indians affirmed, another head upon his 
shoulders, and to fight just as well as if he had the 



And its Owners. 7 

ordinary stock. Any one familiar with Cooper's novels 
will readily recall an incident in one of his Leather- 
stocking" tales, which was probably suggested by this 
old tradition. This Capt. Moselcy had under him a 
company in which there were no less than twelve 
pirates, pardoned to fight Indians. He had signalized 
his promotion by an act of cruel injustice to the 
Christian Indians of Marlboro'. To him certain of the 
townspeople sent secretly. He came. It was mid-win- 
ter. With the active sympathy of many of the citizens, 
it is to be feared, with the passive consent of most is 
certain, he snatched these poor people from the hands 
of Mr. Hoar, scattering their little properties, and 
hurried them to the bleak shores of Deer Island, there 
to spend the bitter winter and the inclement -spring 
with no shelter but their tents, and no food but a 
scanty supply of corn, and the clams they dug from 
the sea shore. It seems incredible, that within two 
months of this outrage, one of these very Indians, 
Thomas Dublit, volunteered to go on a dangerous 
mission to the hostile tribes to endeavor to secure the 
release of Mrs. Rowlandson. For this end he and 
another Indian made three expeditions. On the fourth 
he was accompanied by Mr. John Hoar, who succeeded, 
apparently with no little peril, in redeeming her, bring- 
ing her first to Concord and then to Boston. How many 
of these Nashobah Indians ever came back from their 
cruel exile, neither history nor tradition tell ; but in 
1734 only one was left. Thus the story ends of the 
first owners of our beautiful hill, girded by the quiet 
rivers. Their ample fields we occupy, and at their 
hands our fathers received nothing but gifts and 
friendly treatment. 



8 The Sto?y of a Concord Farm 

The first white owner of the farm was Major Simon 
Willard. Not unlikely three-quarters of Concord-born 
people now living do not know who Simon Willard 
was. Then it is time they did know. For infant Con- 
cord owed more to him perhaps than to any other 
single person. He it was who selected the spot on 
which the town stands, and by his influence with the 
natives promoted its peaceable possession. He was 
one of the little band who made that painful march 
through thickets and watery swamps and unknown 
woods, which the old Puritan annalist so graphically 
describes. And he it was that in the dark and difficult 
days of the first settlement filled every post and per- 
formed every duty. Probably in all those early years 
he was its chief selectman. Certainly for eighteen 
years he was its clerk, and for fifteen years its deputy 
at the General Court. From the beginning he was 
the military commander ; and with two others made 
the legal tribunal before which all cases between man 
and man of moderate importance were tried. Last 
but not least, to him was entrusted the delicate office 
of selling strong water. For, however strange it may 
look to us, rum selling was then committed to men in 
high standing and was itself almost a certificate of 
good character. 

Nor was his work and usefulness confined within 
this single town. Possibly he was the most influential 
man in the county. All through his later years he held 
the office of Assistant. Now, in Massachusetts, in the 
17th century, an Assistant was a person with high and 
varied duties. In the General Court he was a senator. 
To the Governor he was a councillor. In the adminis- 
tration of law a member of the only Supreme Judicial 



And its Owners. g 

Court of the period. To all these honors and labors 
Simon Willard was called for twenty-two successive 
years, and just as he died, received the largest vote 
given for any one for his twenty- third term. Add now 
that in 1641 to him and two others was given the whole 
charge of trade with the Indians; that in 1655 he was 
promoted to the command of all the military force of 
Middlesex County ; that in almost innumerable cases 
he was appointed to settle bounds between individuals 
and towns, and in one case, between Massachusetts 
and New Hampshire, and adjust differences with In- 
dians, whom the fathers, like their children, were not 
indisposed to oppress, — and you see that he was a 
notable man and trusted, not simply here, but in all 
the region about. 

The facts of his life are simple. He was born in 
1605, at Horsemonden, Kent, where a descendant 
found the ancient church in which he was christened, 
and a magnificent oak, more than three hundred years 
old, under whose shade he must have played. When 
he was four years old his mother died, when eleven, 
his father, leaving his son a good patrimony. At 
twenty-nine years he was married, in comfortable cir- 
cumstances, with a promising business. Then like 
many another, for conscience sake, he left all. At 
Cambridge, by the Charles River, he bought a farm, 
built a house and began to trade with the natives. A 
year passed, when he sold his property, turned his 
back on the comparatively settled life of Cambridge, 
and plunged into the wilderness to help plant a new 
town, there to live twenty-four years. His biographer 
intimates that the warm attachment which had grown 
up between him and Rev. Peter Bulkeley led to this 



i o The Story of a Concord Farm 

change of plan. July, 1658, the selectmen of Lancaster, 
feeling the need of a ruling mind, thought "meet to 
order a letter of invitation to be sent to Major Simon 
Willard to come and inhabit among us." A similar 
invitation a previous year had been declined. But 
eight months before this last call Mr. Bulkeley had 
closed his career. Perhaps that weakened the tie 
which held him. At any rate he accepted the invita- 
tion, and sold his farm. For twelve years he was the 
controlling mind in Lancaster. Then he moved to 
Groton, where his son was minister. There King 
Philip's war found him. At seventy, with all the fire 
and vigor of youth, he took command of the Middle- 
sex soldiers, trying, with a scanty force, alas ! to pro- 
tect the wide, helpless frontier. When Captain Thomas 
Wheeler and Lieutenant Simon Davis with a little 
band from Concord and the vicinity were surprised at 
Brookfield and besieged, and in the last extremity, it 
was their old neighbor who rode up with his troopers 
and friendly Indians and rescued them. March 14, 
1676, while he was absent on service, his own house 
at Groton and sixty-five others were burned. One 
month later he lay dead in his new home at Charles- 
town, worn out, I doubt not, by the burden and grief 
of that dreadful war, too heavy for shoulders that had 
already laid on them the weight of seventy-one years. 
The first European, who occupied the farm on the hill, 
was a noble specimen of a noble race. Weighty in 
judgment, versatile, trusty, of kindly temper, of indom- 
itable industry, he filled well almost every conceivable 
post. 

His successor was a very different pattern of a man, 
— much more entertaining, I suspect, much less use- 



And its Owners. i r 

ful. The first glimpse we have of him is in the journal 
of one John Dunton, an Englishman, who made atrip 
through New England in the latter half of the seven- 
teenth century, visiting Lynn on his way to Salem. In 
that journal he records: "About 2 of the Clock I 
reached Capt. Marshall's house, which is half way 
between Boston and Salem. I staid to refresh nature 
with a pint of sack and a good fowl. Capt. Marshall 
was a hearty old gentleman, formerly one of Oliver's 
soldiers, upon which he very much valued himself. He 
had all the history of the civil war at his finger's ends, 
and if we may believe him, Oliver did hardly anything 
that was considerable without his assistance ; and if 
I'd have staid as long as he'd have talked, he'd spoiled 
my ramble to Salem." This Capt. Thomas Marshall 
came to Lynn in 1635. But wnen tne civil war 
between the parliament and the king broke out, he 
returned to England, entered Cromwell's army, became 
a captain, and came back to New England covered 
with glory, a fact of which he was apparently quite 
sensible. A little before, Joseph Armitage built on the 
Saugus River one of the first taverns erected in the 
colony. By a curious freak the sign of this tavern, an 
anchor, was painted a bright blue, and the place was 
familiary known as "The Blew Anchor." This "Blew 
Anchor" Capt. Marshall bought and kept many years. 
He must have been a person of some respectability, as 
the town of Lynn elected him no less than six times 
its deputy to the General Court, and in the Indian wars 
put its soldiers under his command. He must, how- 
ever, have had some weak spots, if we are to judge 
from his experience as a magistrate, entitled to perform 
the marriage ceremony. The Massachusetts Records 



1 2 The Story of a Concord Farm 

state that on the 18th day of October, 1659, " Captain 
Marshall, of Lynn, was empowered to join in marriage 
such persons in Lynn as might desire his services, they 
being published according to lawe." But fifteen years 
after quite a different record appears. It says : " The 
Court being informed that Captain Thomas Marshall 
hath of late married some persons not legally pub- 
lished, on examination of the case, finds that he was 
abused by misinformation of some, and by his own 
overmuch credulity, and that he hath exceeded the 
commission by marrying people not living in the town, 
which might be occasioned by some mistake as to the 
extent of the commission, which the Court hath now 
more clearly explicated to prevent. the like inconve- 
nience ; and judge meete to discharge the said Cap- 
tain Marshall from officiating in that employment." 
What induced Captain Marshall to come to Concord, 
it is impossible to say. But come he did, and on the 
29th of November, 1659, purchased Major Willard's 
farm for ,£210. But as nine days after the date of this 
deed he received authority " to sell strong water to 
travellers and other meet provisions," we exercise the 
Yankee privilege of guessing that he hoped to turn 
an honest penny by selling strong water at the place 
which Major Willard had established. Whether he 
was disappointed in his expectations, or was overcome 
by the temptation to make £$0, we cannot guess. But 
for some reason in sixteen months he sold the place to 
Henry Woodis, or Woodhouse, for ,£240, and so passes 
out from Concord life. The last appearance of this 
veteran, of which we have any account, was as a wit- 
ness in a trial about an old mill privilege in 1683. Six 
years after he died, aged 73. This third owner of the 



And its Owners. 1 3 

farm was evidently a good deal of a character. The 
title, which clung to him, of the jolly landlord of the 
Blue Anchor, was significant. The traveller describes 
him as a hearty old gentleman, full of innocent vanity. 
The town historian calls him a fine old Englishman, 
who kept open doors to all comers. Even the Com- 
mittee of the General Court softens a little and attrib- 
utes his shortcomings to nothing worse than innocent 
credulity. One cannot but think that this easy-going 
and probably rosy-cheeked publican did not find the 
grave puritans of Concord congenial companions, and 
gladly got back to the Blue Anchor and to its cheery 
customers, who would listen to his long yarns about 
half-fabulous exploits. 

Henry Woodis was the first owner of Lee's Hill, 
whom Shattuck records. Yet he is the very one of 
whom we know the least. He came to New England 
in 1650, so Savage affirms. He was in Concord in 
1654, for in March of that year he voted in a minority 
of five against a plan to divide the town into quarters. 
Where he lived then, and what land he occupied is 
not clear. But of the 301 acres which he bought in 
1 66 1 of Thomas Marshall probably only 243 are in the 
present farm. Yet in 1699 he owned 350 acres, and 
no new purchase of land is recorded. May we not 
fairly infer that before 1661 he already had a hundred 
acres of his own, and in the same region. Five years 
after his purchase, his house burned, his only son, an 
infant of a few weeks, perished in the flames ; and so 
it was fated that he should be at once the first and the 
last of his name in the town.' 55 ' 

* Tradition adds that he lost in the great London fire the preceding 
September two houses more. I do not think that the building he lost in 
Concord was the one erected by Simon Willard, but one he himself had 
built and occupied before he purchased the great farm of Thomas Marshall. 



14 The Story of a Concord Farm 

During his fifty years life here he filled some honor- 
able positions. In King Philip's war he was first 
quartermaster, then lieutenant. For three years, from 
1690 to 1692 he was representative. In 1684 he was 
one of a committee appointed to extinguish the Indian 
title to the new grant — now Acton. In 1699, an old 
man, he sold his farm to his son-in-law, Joseph Lee, 
reserving, however, one-fifth for his own use. Two 
years later he died. Mr. Woodis was evidently a 
person of respectable ability and character. But he 
left no such impress on our history as did his prede- 
cessors. Yet he was more essentially a Concord man. 
Few, if any, of their descendants remain in the town, 
while many, if not most of the old families, have a few 
drops of Henry Woodis' blood in their veins. Lee, 
Cheney, Estabrook, Dakin, Davis, Wood and Hey- 
wood are the names of some of the families into which 
his daughters and grand-daughters entered by marriage. 

The tragical death of his only son left Mr. Woodis 
without an heir to his name ; and his estate, partly by 
purchase and partly as the dowry of his daughter, fell 
into the hands of the Lees, by whom it was held one 
hundred and thirteen years. Of this family we have 
now to speak. 

Joseph Lee, the first, was the son of a settler of 
Ipswich, whose true name, tradition says, was Leigh, 
and not Lee, as we have it. How, in those days, 
— when practically Ipswich was as far from Concord 
as Chicago is now, — Joseph Lee and Mary Woodis 
met at all, and especially met frequently enough to 
contemplate matrimony, is the problem. But they did, 
and in 1678 were married. The Ipswich records say 
that Mr. Lee did not move to Concord till 1696. and 



And its Owiiers. 1 5 

then probably to relieve his father-in-law of the burden 
of his great farm. After Mr. Woodis' death he occu- 
pied the portion of the farm he had obtained, appar- 
ently making no effort to reclaim the fifth which had 
been bequeathed to the fourth daughter, Mrs. Dakin. 
Old age stole upon him, and in 17 16 he gave his son 
Joseph 150 acres and his other children the rest of his 
estate and then died. That is all history or tradition 
records. 

Joseph Lee, the second, was a physician. More 
ambitious than his father, he early set to work to unite 
the fragments of this grand farm. He purchased of 
Elinor Dakin the fifth, which his grandfather had alien- 
ated ; then his brother's and sister's portions, finally 
adding, in 1730, two adjoining strips. So the 243 
acres of Thomas Marshall, which Mr. Woodis had 
made 350, became in his grandson's charge, 375. 

Joseph Lee, third of the name in Concord, physi- 
cian, tory, had by the middle of the century again 
united the farm. By what heirship, by what purchases, 
is not clear. That he practiced his profession steadily 
is not probable. On the contrary the numerous acces- 
sions of land which he made outside his farm, and out- 
side the town, indicate that he had large business trans- 
actions and achieved wealth. Ever after he was twenty- 
eight, until the commencement of the Revolutionary 
war, his time and interest must have been a good deal 
absorbed by church quarrels. He was one of those 
who seceded from the First Parish and formed what was 
called, in derision, the Black Horse Church, because 
its meetings were -held in the hall of a tavern, near 
our present library, which had for a sign a black horse. 
This breach having been healed by the death of Rev. 



1 6 The Story of a Concord Farm 

Mr. Bliss, another quarrel, more personal and bitter 
than the last, broke out. Dr. Lee sought admission 
to the church and was repeatedly refused. Nine 
church members and others not of the church, under 
the title of aggrieved brethren, espoused his cause. 
What with interminable church meetings and innumer- 
able church committees and councils, mutual or other- 
wise, they keep the church and themselves in a turmoil 
seven years. The cause of this division was not, as 
we might suppose, doctrinal. A somewhat tattered 
document shows that the cause was practical and per- 
sonal. This asserts that Dr. Lee had oppressed 
widows and orphans by undue delays in settling 
accounts and by exorbitant charges ; that he gave way 
to his passions, vilely reflecting on his pastor ; that he 
threatened and bull-raged a committee who had done 
nothing but give him sound advice. All of which, as 
an ex parte statement, may be taken with a grain of 
salt. In the revolution, the doctor, having much to 
lose, shrank from civil war, upheld the existing powers, 
in short, was a tory. This was natural, and perhaps 
might have been excused. But that he stole down 
to Cambridge and betrayed secrets to the enemy, 
could not be overlooked. To this he pleaded 
guilty. For this he was confined fourteen months 
to his farm, glad, no doubt, to escape with so 
light a penalty. One other trace of him I find in a 
letter of condolence to Stephen Hosmer, in which he 
speaks of himself as confined and deprived of the 
privilege of attending the funeral of a friend. Many 
curious traditions about Dr. Lee still linger, whose 
authenticity is not perhaps perfectly clear. One states 
that he had an apartment in which he kept a fire burn- 



A?td its Owners. i 7 

ing thirty years, thinking that he was on the eve of 
discovering the philosopher's stone. Another ascribes 
to him a violent and unreasonable temper, and tells of 
a certain valuable lot of ship timber, which he refused 
to sell, and suffered to rot upon the ground, because 
he could not obtain his price. Despite his troubles, 
and despite any faults of temper, he lived to a good 
old age, dying at eighty years, in 1797, and having 
reared over his remains a stone which ascribed to him 
pretty much all of the Christian virtues. Dr. Lee has 
made a permanent impression upon the history of the * 
town. He has made a permanent impression upon its 
very soil. For I think that the name Lee's Hill will 
outlive all its successors. I have no faith that he was 
one who would have had a tranquil life in any commu- 
nity, or have been popular. I picture him as some- 
what selfish, a man of set opinions and not a little 
resolute and pugnacious in the assertion of them. 

It was while Dr. Lee was confined to his farm that 
one of the most interesting episodes in Concord history 
took place. I refer to the sojourn of Harvard College. 
When we consider how, sooner, or later everything 
seems to appear in this ancient town ; that it first 
sheltered the Provincial Congress ; that in 1786 it ran 
a narrow chance of being itself the State capital ; that 
for the space of a few months it was, six years later, 
actually that ; that in our own day it has been the 
home of two such opposites as the State prison and 
the School of Philosophy, it may seem to be in the 
order of events, that our great institution of learning 
should sojourn awhile amid its tranquil scenery. At 
any rate it happened that when, by the siege of Boston, 
Cambridge became one armed camp, Harvard College 



1 8 The Story of a Concord Farm 

was transported to Concord. The professors and stu- 
dents were scattered through the village, — twelve of 
the latter finding shelter in the venerable mansion of 
Dr. Lee. One wonders what sort of an impression 
this advent made upon the town. Here was a quiet 
village, quiet then beyond all our capacity in these 
days of railroads, telegraphs and telephones even to 
comprehend. Within a mile of the church there could 
not have been more than seventy-five houses. To this 
little hamlet came 143 students, with the five, six or 
ten professors or tutors, with library and apparatus, 
with increased social life and excitement. 500 students 
billeted upon the modern town for a year would hardly 
be an equal burden. It is interesting to see what dis- 
tinguished men were the result of this somewhat 
vagrant course of instruction. In the. little class of 
42, which graduated in 1776, I note the names of 
Christopher Gore, one of the ablest of the governors 
of Massachusetts ; Samuel Sewall, chief justice of the 
same State ; Royal Tyler, who combined in himself 
the somewhat incongruous distinctions of chief justice 
of Vermont and author of the first American drama 
which ever appeared upon the stage. To these might 
be added two or three others scarcely less distinguished. 
I question whether in the long and honorable list of 
Harvard any class has produced, according to its num- 
bers, more able men than this very class, which spent 
its senior year in our town. All the students did not 
escape the fascinations of the place, for Dr. Ripley, for 
63 years minister of Concord, Dr. Hurd, for 55 years 
its physician, and Jonathan Fay, for 33 years its lawyer, 
were all members of the college in the year of its 
wandering. 



Audits Owners. 19 

Whether any of the Lee family occupied the home- 
stead between the death of the doctor, in 1797, and 
the time when the property passed into other hands in 
18 14, I am not sure. But as Tempe Lee, widow of 
Silas Lee, did not part with her right of dower until 
18 14, when William Gray gave her $1 100 for the same, 
it seems probable that she is the female member of 
the family of whom a faint memory remains in the 
minds of those born early in the century. The farm 
itself seems to have been owned jointly by his sons, 
Joseph and John. Then John became, by purchase, 
sole possessor. He conveyed it to his younger brother 
Silas, from whom it passed finally out of the family. 
All these sons appear to have been men of more than 
usual ability. Joseph was ordained minister in Royals- 
ton in 1768, and preached his last sermon fifty years 
after his settlement. John was in Castine, Me., as 
early as 1785, was collector of the port from 1789 till 
1801. Afterwards he was largely engaged in the lum- 
ber business, apparently to no profit. For in 18 10 he 
conveyed the farm to Silas, as it would seem to protect 
his brother in the endorsement of a note of ten 
thousand dollars, which he himself could not pay. 
Silas was a lawyer in Wiscasset, Me., about 1790, 
member of Congress in 1800 and 1801, United States 
attorney for the State of Maine in 1802, and then 
judge of probate. As we have seen, he became 
owner of the farm in 18 10. But one month later he 
mortgaged it for $10,000, no doubt to enable him to 
pay the note for which he was bound, and at his death, 
in 1 8 14, the mortgage not having been redeemed, the 
estate fell into the hands of the mortgagee. Before 
dismissing this portion of my subject, let me note, as 



20 The Story of a Concord Farm 

an interesting case of persistence of the family type, 
that while Dr. Joseph Lee was a tory in the Revolu- 
tion, his son John, in the war of 1812, was a federalist 
to the verge of disloyalty, and his grandson John was 
in the war of the rebellion in sympathy with the South 
and opposed to the government. 

So William Gray, merchant of Boston, became the 
owner of Lee's Farm. One of the notable men of his 
day was this same William Gray, better known by the 
sobriquet of Billy Gray. Born in Lynn in 1750, he 
was grandson of one of the three shoemakers of that 
town who kept journeymen. The boy himself was 
apprenticed to the same trade, and it is not unlikely 
that if he had continued in it, with his vast energy, he 
would have made Lynn before its time the great boot 
and shoe town. But health failing, he was put first 
into the employment of a Mr. Gardner and then of 
Richard Derby, one of the great merchant kings ol 
Salem, in the days of her great prosperity. A story is 
preserved of his boyhood, something of the George 
Washington and hatchet variety, in which the Salem 
lad appears at no disadvantage in comparison with the 
father of his country, but tells the tale of the breaking 
of a square of glass with such simple truth, that he 
receives from his employer as a reward a suit of 
clothes. Whether this story is veritable or one of the 
myths which gather around great memories, I know 
not. But certain it is that his integrity, joined to a 
mind of wonderful capacity, enabled him to build up a 
business unparalleled in his time. He owned sixty 
square-rigged vessels, and his enthusiastic biographer 
exclaims that there was no country where his name 
was not known, and no sea not ploughed by his keels. 



And its Owners. 2 1 

He was a man of striking qualities. Through a long 
life he rose between 3 and 4 o'clock, writing all his 
letters, planning all his enterprises, before half the 
world was out of bed. As an employer he was just 
and generous. He never discharged a good servant, 
and kept many of his captains in his employ more than a 
quarter of a century. He first discerned the fine quality 
of Joshua Bates, the American partner of the Barings, 
and the founder of the Boston Free Library, — taking 
him from his father's cart, which he was driving, into 
his counting-room, employing him in confidential busi- 
ness, and so launched him on his great career. One 
adage, now of pretty wide circulation, may be credited 
to him. When asked what " enough " was, he replied 
" a little more." Mr. Gray might never have left 
Salem, — in which case Lee's Hill might never have 
known him, — had it not been for the bitter party feeling 
of the time. In early life he had been a federalist. 
But when the embargo, in Jefferson's administration, 
went into effect, he separated from his party, opposing 
and defeating in town meeting a resolution of censure 
of government. His motive could not have been a 
selfish one, for on account of this embargo act he had 
himself forty vessels rotting at his wharves. But those 
were days of savage party division. There was no 
measuring of words. He was called everything that 
the vocabulary of abuse could furnish. Salem became 
distasteful to him. He went to Boston, carrying with 
him his business. There the democratic party took 
him up and chose him lieutenant governor. During the 
war of 1812 he lavished his wealth in support of the 
government. Mr. Drake says that it was his gold that 
fitted out the Constitution for that memorable cruise 



2 2 The Story of a Concord Farm . 

in which she took the Guerriere, and forever dissipated 
the false ideas of British naval supremacy.* Mr. 
Gray died in 1825, the richest man in New England. 
It was in 18 16, possibly in 18 13 or '14, that he became 
owner of Lee's Farm. He never, indeed, lived here, 
but employed a foreman to carry on his place. There 
was a very heavy growth of old timber. The late Mr. 
James Wood told me that he worked one winter lum- 
bering for Mr. Gray, that fourteen or fifteen teams 
were occupied drawing to the river the great pines and 
oaks, — some of them two and three and even four 
feet in diameter, — that an enormous raft was made, 
floated down the river, thence to Boston, there to be 
used in the building of his wharf, and in the construc- 
tion of his ships. I suspect that on the whole, farming, 
without the eye of the employer, did not prove profit- 
able. At any rate, in 182 1, he sold the farm for $3000 
less than it cost him; and so closed the connection 
with the town of one of the most remarkable merchants 
which Massachusetts ever produced. 

We have seen that up to 1825 the farm, of which 
we have been discoursing, had had in its varied history 
for owners, an Indian queen, a fur-trader, an inn- 
keeper, two farmers, two doctors, two merchants, one 
minister and one lawyer. It was now for a brief 
season to be the property of a judge. Samuel Phillips 
Prescott Fay was Concord-born, the son of Jonathan 



* An old merchant of Boston, but who spent his boyhood and youth in 
Concord, used to assert that the very timber of which the Constitution 
was built, was cut from Lee's Hill, and that his own father teamed it to 
Charlestown. When we consider what a magnificent growth covered the 
hill, and that we know that Dr. Lee was in the habit of selling ship- 
timber, the story looks probable enough, and it certainly adds a new 
element of interest to the spot. 



And its Owners. 23 

Fay. He graduated with high honor from Harvard 
College in 1798. A French war was then threatening, 
and a small army was gathered at Oxford in this State. 
Thither he went with the commission of captain. But 
the war never took place, and he returned to the study 
of the law which he had just commenced, was admitted 
to the bar, and early obtained a good professional 
reputation. In 1821 he was appointed judge of pro- 
bate, and retained the place until ill health rendered 
him unequal to its duties, thirty-five years after. He 
was two years a member of the Governor's Council 
and twenty-eight years an overseer of Harvard Col- 
lege. As he lived until 1856, he must have been 
known to many of the elder portion of Concord people. 
The unbroken testimony is that he was a man of good 
legal ability, absolute integrity, great urbanity, and 
much quiet humor. His ownership of the property 
was nominal, as he purchased it in 182 1 and held it 
till 1825, not for himself, but for his sister's husband, 
Joseph Barrett. Still no account of the farm and its 
owners would be complete which omitted him. 

Joseph Barrett, familiarly handed down in Concord 
traditions as Squire Joe Barrett, was a striking figure 
in the town in the first half of this century. On his 
father's side he was grandson of Col. James Barrett, 
who commanded at North 'Bridge. On his mother's 
side he was descended from Henry Woodis, one of the 
early owners of the farm, and Joseph Estabrook, the 
third minister of the town. Through his paternal 
grandmother he claimed kindred with Peter Bulkeley. 
Indeed, it may be said that in every fibre of his body 
and every drop of his blood he was a Concord product, 
for I have been unable to find a single ancestor on 



24 The Story of a Concord Farm 

either side who was not, either of Concord origin or 
else a settler of the town. In person he was well 
nigh of gigantic proportions, standing an inch or two 
over six feet, and weighing more than 250 pounds. 
Many feats of strength are told of him, such as lifting 
barrels of cider and shouldering and carrying up stairs 
a bag containing eight bushels of corn. His size and 
weight did not lesson his activity. In the hay field, 
cradling grain, or holding the plow, especially when he 
took part in full dress and ruffled shirt at plowing 
matches, few men could keep pace with him. He was 
a person of great resolution and courage. For years 
he was a deputy sheriff, and displayed both his sagacity 
and fearlessness in the arrest of hard characters, which 
were by no means few, even in what many esteem to 
be the golden age of the republic. In 1825 Mr. Bar- 
rett became the owner of the Lee farm, though, as we 
have seen, it was purchased for him and occupied by 
him as early as 1821. How successful an agriculturist 
he was I know not, but he must have been a notable 
one. Everything he did was on a large scale. His 
nephew, George M. Barrett, told me that he used to 
keep a flock of eight hundred sheep. To these he gave 
endless attention, himself caring for them in health 
and sickness, so that they knew him and followed him. 
At one time he engaged in the manufacture of cider, 
often having on hand more than 500 barrels. Cutting 
and teaming of wood and lumber grew in his hands to 
large proportions. A story, which has been preserved, 
shows how great a business in this line he must have 
done. A man asked the squire if he would be one 
of several to loan him a yoke of oxen, as he had a 
great load to move. " How many do you want in all ?" 



And its Owners. 25 

was the reply. "Ten yoke." " If that is all," said the 
squire, " you need not go round to the neighbors to 
gather such a little team, I will furnish the whole." 
The fact is that Mr. Barrett had in his barn at that 
very time twelve yoke of oxen and six or eight horses. 
It is not so wonderful that, in these days of horned 
scarcity, his son likes to have a good pair of cattle. 
As we have intimated, the squire was a mighty man in 
the hay field, taking the lead, and permitting no man 
to pass him. His confidence in his vigor and activity 
led him into a sort of dilatoriness, by which lateness to 
church, and especially to the stage-coach, was a rule of 
his life, and which in a person of his genial ways only 
added a touch of humor to people's conception of him. 
In 1844 he gave the charge of the farm up to his son 
Richard, working afterwards as suited his fancy. He 
was driving a load of stone when the news came to 
him that he was elected Treasurer and Receiver Gen- 
eral of the State. He jocosely said he could not 
possibly accept it, for he was engaged to work for 
Dick at $10 a month. However, he must have made 
a compromise with his employer, as he took and filled 
the office until his death in 1848. It would be pre- 
sumptuous for me to attempt any characterization of 
one known to so many by personal acquaintance. 
But this, I think, maybe said : No one would be likely 
to attempt to depict the social and business life of Con- 
cord between 1800 and 1850, and omit from his picture 
the stalwart form and marked mental physiognomy of 
the twelfth owner of Lee's farm, Squire Joe Barrett. 

Of the later owners of Lee's farm it does not seem 
needful to speak at any great length. From 1844 to 
1852 it belonged to the son of the squire, our townsman, 



26 The Story of a Concord Farm 

Captain Richard Barrett, and was carried on by him. 
He sold it in 1852, and has for many years filled the 
position of Treasurer of the Middlesex Mutual Fire 
Insurance Co. Samuel G. Wheeler, the purchaser, 
was a native of the State of New York, who in a long^ 
and active life had been by turns a manufacturer, a 
commission merchant and a dealer in real estate. 
While he occupied the place he thoroughly renovated 
the old mansion, built the great barn, laid the stone 
walls, planted on the Acton Road rows of elms, and 
so in many ways added to the value and increased the 
comeliness of the estate. 

Four years passed, and the property had a new 
owner. It would have seemed as if every variety of 
life and occupation had already come into contact with 
the ancient farm. But not so. The new owner, Capt. 
David Elwell, was a retired sea captain, who in three 
score and odd years had plowed more water than land. 
He was a remarkably intelligent, active and successful 
shipmaster, making long voyages, chiefly to the East 
Indies and Sumatra. It is remembered of him that he 
was the first American captain who ever sailed through 
the Straits of Magellan. In 1840 he retired from the 
sea, was for years wharfinger of Union wharf, and 
later Treasurer of the East Boston Dry Dock Co. At 
the advanced age of sixty-eight years he came to Con- 
cord. He filled the house with a great collection of 
curiosities, gathered from many lands, and settled 
down in his new home. But in the winter of 1856 
and '57 his house with all its contents was burned and 
he moved back to East Boston. Nothing remained 
but the cellar and the great chimney. On this last 
there was, when I came to town, a half- effaced inscrip- 



And its Owners. 2 7 

tion variously deciphered 1646 or 1656. It was no 
doubt the date of the erection of the building. A 
single Concord anecdote of Capt. Elwell has been pre- 
served, and indicates that he was a man who had his 
own ideas of men and things and did not hesitate to 
express them. After the fire he stopped awhile at the 
Middlesex Hotel. Capt. Isaac I. Hayes, of Arctic ce- 
lebrity, came to Concord, probably to lecture. Right- 
fully or wrongfully, the impression then was that he 
had in an unjustifiable manner deserted his superior 
officer, Capt. Kane. Some one offered to introduce 
Capt. Elwell to Mr. Hayes. " No," was the emphatic 
answer, " not to a man who deserted his commander." 
The boy of ten or twelve, who heard the reply, never 
forgot the kind of wrathful indignation with which it 
was spoken. 

Two more changes and the history of the farm is 
completed. It passed successively into the hands of 
two grandsons of old Dr. Isaac Hurd, who, in the last 
year of his college life, spent as it was in Concord, 
might well have frequented its goodly acres, and 
possibly lived in its venerable homestead. Again 
fresh vocations furnished fresh owners. Joseph L. 
Hurd was a commission grain merchant, having his 
headquarters at Joliet, Illinois, a State which only as 
far back as the time when William Gray owned Lee's 
farm, must have been a wellnigh untrodden prairie. 
For in 18 10 Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota tog-ether 
had only about twelve thousand inhabitants, or one 
person to every sixteen square miles. Charles Henry 
Hurd, the present owner, came to the farm from an 
employment which would have filled our ancestors 
with astonishment, if not with affright. He had been 



28 The Story of a Concord Farm 

a railroad man, a vocation which came into existence 
not half a century ago, and which in that brief time 
has wrought marvellous changes and accelerated ma- 
terial progress. 

Nearly a quarter of a millenium has slipped away since 
the white man took possession of these acres. The 
old mansion, the old barn, all the old things of man's 
device are gone. A modern house and barn of grand 
proportions have now replaced them. Perhaps the 
farm looks forward to another 250 years of yet more 
varied history, to be rehearsed by some future chron- 
icler to an audience yet to be. Who knows ? 

This is an ancient story, and I think it not amiss to 
add to the chronicle what our Puritan ministers used 
to call an improvement. Rightly viewed this farm 
has been in itself a little world. All trades, all pro- 
fessions, all human interests, seem sooner or later to 
have come to it. The Indian, the fur-trader and 
planter of new towns, the Cromwellian soldier and inn- 
keeper, merchants, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, farm- 
ers, a judge, a minister, a sailor, a railroad manager — 
all these have possessed the land, and for the most 
part have departed and left little trace of themselves 
behind. I count that nine different stocks or families 
have in 250 years owned the farm, and that only two 
of them are represented in the town today, unless it 
be by remote side branches. But on the soil there are 
nothing but surface changes. The beautifully rounded 
little hill, the green meadow, the winding rivers, these 
are just what they were two hundred years ago. 

Instinctively as I close, I recall Emerson's words, 
which seem simply concentrated history : 



And its Owners. 29 

" Each of these landlords walked amidst his farm, 
Saying, ' 'Tis mine, my children's and my name's; 
How sweet the west wind sounds in my own trees ! 
How graceful climb those shadows on my hill ! 
I fancy these pure waters and the flags 
Know me, as does my dog; we sympathize; 
And, I affirm, my actions smack of the soil.'" 

" Where are these men ? Asleep beneath their grounds ; 
And strangers, fond as they, their furrows plough. 

The lawyer's deed 

Ran sure, 

In tail, 

To them and to their heirs 

Who shall succeed, 

Without fail, 

Forevermore. 

Here is the land, 

Shaggy with wood, 

With the old valley, 

Mound and flood. 

But the heritors? 

Pled like the flood's foam, — 

The lawyer and the laws, 

And the kingdom, 

Clean swept herefrom. 

They called me theirs, 

Who so controlled me ; 

Yet every one 

Wished to stay, and is gone. 

How am I theirs, 

If they cannot hold me, 

But I hold them?" 



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